For Rose (who didn’t make it out) We of the thickened tongues And contorted faces Dancing chorea As if our life depended on it We of the broken down Spindled misshapen unformed bodies That contort and twist And are often in agony Sometimes for your amusement For what we are Is for our mental sins Visited upon us by our genetic transgressions And what we were given to numb these Wrought havoc in the brain Somewhere in the basal ganglia Ripping apart neurons like Jack the Ripper Thorazined, Haldoled, Seorequeled And the compliant put together Our mental composure Walk the streets selves sutured Lips sewn shut tightened Spilled out of the institutions Into the real world to Backforth shuttle Our twisted smiles betray a caustic lie For we are forever within the institutions If our forebears were If our friends are If our co-workers were And when your body is dancing To the realm of the beat Of neuraleptics that have Embedded themselves in you Your apartment, work, bus, street, supermarket Or shelter or program or prison more likely Is still the institution Chemical straitjacketed forever Punished for what unknown Mental quirks that did not mesh With the others that walked together Now you must walk apart Now you must dance But dance in freedom Not in agony Dance to stamp out oppression Dance until we all dance together Screaming, melding, meshing Unbinding breaking the inwards Iron barred chains And bricked up minds Raise your shivering spastic clenched fist In indignation as you spirit all the others Out of the prisons they live in Locked under the neuraleptic key In starch white buildings And lead them to the open air And may the only screams Of the asylums, nursing homes, institutions Be the ones of the souls now departed And may their screams be made into funeral music To wail like banshees to keep the former wardens Up all night to atone for their sins